Everyday solidarity

I1

In union organizing drives and on picket lines...I've seen...racism, sexism break down. I mean not immediately, not in the first day or two, but over a period of time. Folks start to see that the person who's working with them side by side or standing with them in the picket line has a hell of a lot more in common with them then they do with the boss who's making racist jokes and sexist jokes.

Violence, clarity, and context

I19

Diversity of tactics - really what it boils down to is black bloc versus no black bloc and that...gets turned into violence versus non-violence [but] they don't line up. I think starting with a definition of what is violence, and what is the black bloc, and where does it fit on the spectrum of violence, and what's the particular advantages and disadvantages of a black bloc, and taking that out of the conversation of violence versus non-violence because it's not the same question as far as I'm concerned. Equating those things doesn't make any sense to me. When I think of violence...in social movements [I think of] revolutionary wars or something [like that] which has no bearing [on] what's happening in our context at the moment. So what do I think of violence? I think it's certainly justified and necessary in cases of self-defense.

Dispelling the myth

I4

I think a major part of what the Left needs to do now is to dispel this myth that capitalism can ever actually create a sustainable future.

A new party

I16

I think there has to be a new party. I think there has to be a new communist party, that's what I think. We see that we're not able to get legislation in this province to protect workers in the workplace. We see that we have something in the order of one in eight children living below the poverty level and families not having enough food to eat. I don't think this can be solved by tinkering around the edges and sending in a social worker. We need to have some kind of spirited organization that is going to consistently fight.

Building commonality

I1

I [found] myself spending more and more of my time on issues I was seeing [around me]....I saw tenant organizing in a similar way that I see union organizing: it's a way to actually build commonality.

Electoral politics and lived realities

I21

I believe in a diversity of tactics. I believe that electoral politics is necessary. I hate it….So even when I thought it was the right thing to do I hated it. I do not like electoral politics but I consider electoral politics to be important particularly given the fact that as the left we're so fucking weak. So to me it's an arrogant position to dismiss electoral politics because what it does is to dismiss the day-to-day lives of working people and poor people.

Everyday winning

I21

You know what [winning] looks like for me? [It] looks like my life. My life if my kids were around me…[I’ve] got a place to live, little garden, a guaranteed annual income because I'm on a pension now, time to engage in conversation, time to be with friends and family, time to go for a walk on the beach, time to listen to some music. I think my life is so privileged except for what capitalism has done to take my sons away from me, which is an economic and social phenomenon. What capitalism has done is to make me lonely.

Radical sympathies

I27

My perspective has been coming from a radical, egalitarian position. I know that there are many different points one can attack something [from], but the point is to draw the links between those things….So yeah, I have an anarchist-communist outlook, that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to other things and other perspectives.

Radical values

I6

I don't want to point to a specific example of an activist initiative and say that this is the guide to the future. My own feeling is that there are values that I think I'd like to see broadened to be values that people can work with. Things like solidarity, affinity, autonomy, cooperation over competition, these sorts of vague themes. And then there are various experiments with those which are sometimes inspiring, like cooperatives. Those sorts of things have those values in them.

Values in action

I7

We're not as good at making our messages attractive….People like to talk about their values and people make their political decisions, whether it's voting or...what they're engaged in, what they choose to support, and they do that based on values. They don't do that based on solid analysis for the most part….we've come to a point in human history, I guess, in our civilization, where it's not about solidly analyzing everything unless it has to do with you personally, unless it's like your RRSPs, then you do it, but in terms of your politics people vote their values.